Monday, July 2, 2012

Local designers now aiming to sell $500,000 in T-shirts

"Love from Above." "More Disco, Less Inferno." "F*ck fire." These slogans, among others, grace the T-shirts currently up for sale by Wild Fire Tees, a group of local designers, printers and marketers who banded together in support of the massive statewide wildfire relief effort. Fully 100 percent of profits are donated to the relief effort.

The project crystallized remarkably quickly. "We came up with the idea last Monday at noon," said Austin Buck of CoPilot Creative, in an interview with the Independent. "I was able to get [...] the design community together, they were all in by Monday night. We built the site Tuesday and got some design submissions from the local community here, and then launched Wednesday at noon.”

Even faster came the sales. "Our initial goals were to sell, like, a hundred shirts and screenprint them here in the office on a Saturday," said Buck. "We hit that in the first half hour or so.”

The group has since tacked some additional zeros onto the end of their original numeric goals, now aiming to eventually sell 500,000 $500,000 in shirts, according to their Facebook page. WFT already met an earlier ambitious target, having raised $300,000 in sales by Sunday night.

Many of the shirts, however, come from independent designers. "We’ve got eight new items up, and those have all been submitted from local and national designers wanting to be involved," says Buck. "We’re curating those designs here and just taking the best of the best.”

This being the second batch of designs—the first sold out on Saturday. "They're limited editions," Buck goes on. "You’re not going to find them anywhere else. If you missed out, you can actually vote online to bring old shirts back.”

Have a witty anti-fire-ism or design you're itching to show off? “We’re already probably at half full from Round 3 for designs we’re [including]," says Buck. "But we’re still looking for submissions.”

As wildfires continue to ravage Colorado, residents are desperate to help in any way they can. A group of talented Colorado designers, marketers and printers have quickly banded together to donate their skills and launch Wild Fire Tees, a rotating line of Colorado-created, limited edition tee shirts with 100% of the proceeds going to wildfire relief.

“We love Colorado,” said Austin Buck, co-owner of Co-Pilot Creative, a Colorado Springs-based design firm and a devastated resident who founded the site. “We hate watching it burn.”

Inspired by the Central Texas Wildfire T-Shirt fundraiser powered by AIRSHP in response to the Balstrop fire in Texas, Buck and his crew at Co-Pilot brought in a few local friends who wanted to help – Colorado Springs-based design companies Fixer Creative Co., Design Rangers, marketing company Magneti Marketing, Pueblo-based LastLeaf Printing, and artist Jeremy Grant – to co-found Wild Fire Tees.

[...] “The response has been overwhelming. The stories people have told us – from a couple who are having a “Give Back” wedding and are buying t-shirts for their wedding party, to a Boulder designer who submitted a design after watching the Boulder fire ravage his neighborhood,” Sara DeRose, co-owner of Fixer Creative Co. said. “We’re amazed and proud.”